Converting Dynamic Disks Back to Basic Disks

Windows 2000, XP and 2003 provide a feature called Dynamic Disks. A dynamic disk can contain simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. When using dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without the need to restart the computer.

Once the change has been made to Dynamic Disks, they cannot be changed back to Basic Disks without deleting the partitions and rebuilding the disk. This can be troublesome, thankfully there is a way to hack it back to a Basic Disk. Caution: Make sure you have a full, verified backup of all your data before you proceed. If you make an error during this procedure the disk will become corrupt and data loss can occur. Before you begin you will need a tool from the Windows 2000 SP4 Support Tools called DskProbe. DskProbe is a sector editor tool that allows you to edit, save, and copy data on a physical hard disk. Once you have downloaded and installed the support tools, run DskProbe.exe from C:\Program Files\Support Tools. Note: Windows 2003 Support Tools includes DskProbe 2. The GUI is changed but the steps are the same. With DskProbe running click on Drives and select Physical Drives.

 

 In the Open Physical Drive window double click the drive you wish to edit and then click on Set Active. Once the drive has been set as active, close the window.

  Next click on Sectors and select Read.

Enter the Starting Sector as 0 and the Number of Sectors to 1 then click Read.

 Scroll down until you locate sector 01C0 and the third byte from the left should read 42. Along with being the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything else, it is also what identifies this as a dynamic disk.

 

Change this byte to 07.

 

Next click File and then select Exit. You will be prompted to save the changes made.

 

Click yes, and when DskProbe closes reboot the machine. Once the computer has rebooted open up Disk Management and the drive should be restored back to a Basic Disk. You will have to do this for each partition on the disk.

 

It is a good idea to run ChkDsk with the /F switch to locate and repair and errors on the disk.

 

[url]http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236086/en-us[/url]